December 2016

Muslims and Jews follow a lunar calendar, so their holidays move around a lot. But last year the birthday of Mohammed fell on Christmas Eve. And this year, the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve for the first time in 111 years. For the children of Abraham, that's a remarkable convergence. So I've asked my husband, Hank, to tell the story of Hanukkah, light the Menorah and say the blessing in Hebrew. Then I'll tell you why.

When it comes to the internet, we are left wondering, why does chaos spread so effortlessly and quickly, but love does not? The answer to that question points back to the incarnation. I would say that chaos spreads so much faster in cyberspace because it doesn't need a body, and love does. You can telecast the hate on Twitter pretty easily. But sharing the love is far more complicated. There are many variables. At the least, it requires our heads and our hearts and our hands.

There is a scourge plaguing this country. And I'm not talking about the Zika virus, the heroin epidemic, cancer or the Kardashian family. No, the silent sickness that has descended upon America today is loneliness.

So what if we treated our fears the way Newt Scamander treated his fantastic beasts? He named and claimed each one of them. And instead of trying to hunt them down and kill them, he studied them, so he could learn all he could from them. What if we did the same with our fears? I believe that by God's grace, we could learn a whole lot about love from them.